by Terry Griggs
So here I am hoofing it up the road barefoot, risking cuts, stubbed toes, and hookworm, but not, as you might suspect, in a penitential frame of mind. The real wound, the one inflicted on the muscular organ still thumping gamely in my chest, required the salve of an apology, or, failing that, universal recognition that I’d been hard done by, snubbed, grossly insulted, kicked when down, purposely misunderstood, undervalued, and egregiously ditched for a substandard male, a proto-cheater and wife-beater. If Bea thought she was striking out on the road to matrimonial bliss, I’m afraid she was suffering from a brain-eating delusion. An issue I fully intended to air during the service when Reverend Cowley asked if there were any impediments to this union. Impediments! Friends and neighbours, have a seat, kick off your own shoes, unstopper those concealed mickeys, this is going to take a while!
You get to know a patch of road. I’d lived on this one off and on over the years, long enough to stake a claim. While my parents played musical domiciles—and whatever else they played at—moving, always moving, I learned not to put my feet up, not to get overly attached to the ever-changing interiors. The contents of the outdoors they at least couldn’t hurl into a box in a fit of dissatisfaction and lug off to some more temporarily pleasing spot. From where we were located now, in a rental perilously close to identifying as a trailer, a two-mile hike would get me to town, or in the opposite direction, to the Dump. Destinations of equal interest and both offering entertainment along the way.
Dumpward lay an elderly apple tree in which I could sit and pitch rotting fruit at the passing traffic—at the postman, Mr. Pock, on his run (he waved), at the Wilson’s or Petty’s returning from a shopping trip in town (they waved). Shrubs swathed in tent caterpillar nests held considerable fascination, reminding me as they did of the gauzy veils women once wore while out motoring in their Model-T’s, the contents of the veils now a busy squirming mass of wormy life. (Rather like that presently collecting in the church for Bea’s wedding.) Once Mr. Pock had made his deliveries, there were mailboxes to check, find out who might be hearing from whom, hands both familiar and strange to parse, copperplate or barely legible. At times I’ve hovered at the foot of a long lane—the house at the end entirely obscured by the foliage of ancient oaks—a blue envelope balanced delicately on my palm, wondering, wondering… overcome by this excess of secrecy.
Ditches in either direction held treasures, but mostly if you were ten years old and considered shards of smashed brake lights or discarded empties worthy of note. No longer ten, indeed tragically close to one-score and senescence, I found that recently, despite the lure of the Dump itself (you never knew what you’d find!), the road to town beckoned more. Beckoned, while at the same time encouraging a brisker and less observant passage.
Be that as it may, I’d never lost my appreciation for the old comforting sights along the way, always stopping, for example, to pay my respects to the Bathtub Madonna who presided in her porcelain grotto in the Minelli’s front yard. Despite her reliably placid demeanor, the Virgin could have used more respect, too, for I noted again today that no one had bothered to clean the bathtub ring before installing her, which gave her a subfusc nimbus composed of sloughed Minelli matter, cells and pubes (from the evidence a furry lot), and God knows what else. Also, since my last visit she’d developed a skin problem. A scum of algae had begun to spread across her face, giving her a greenish, alien aspect. Nor was her complexion improved any by that bullet hole in her head. Some yahoo out joyriding and sick of peppering road signs had plugged her right in the noggin, causing her some mental ventilation. Or… some kid with a BB gun or a 22? Or, more likely yet, a shot gone wild, our boys hardly what you’d call sharpshooters. Dunno, this was me trying to be reasonable, a strain at the best of times. Sad, though, if intentional, very sad. We girls were going to have to stick together.
“Bitch!” Bea had shrieked.
“Whore!” I’d countered.
“Hag!”
“Douche!”
I’m afraid we got into it, slapping down insults as though caught up in a particularly nasty game of Snap. I may have called her a “butt hole” at one point, which I should say, in case it’s not obvious, embodied an attempt to move away from those tiresome, female-specific deprecations. Neutral ground—an anus is an anus is an anus. Doubtful that my efforts were appreciated.
I nodded sagely to Mary before moving on and wished her, if not a speedy Assumption, then at least a well-deserved divine intervention.
Next stop, the mystery house. Not that I stopped, no one did. In a car, you speeded up when you came to it, gazing straight ahead. Walking or biking, you held your breath until safely past. The house itself didn’t appear to be especially dreadful, certainly no worse than what most of the town or countryfolk lived in. Not your classic haunted house—decayed, creaky-hinged, bat-infested, lapped in darkness. Not by any means. What we had here was a compact one storey, white clapboard, bevelled living room window, no curtains, cement steps leading up to the side door. Yet I’d never heard the house named, as most people’s places were—the Murphy’s, the Kidd’s. (Even, in many cases, if the families no longer lived there. Even if the house no longer existed.) This place never came up in conversation. So what had happened in there to earn it this eerie silent treatment? I don’t know. Lips were firmly sealed on the subject and could not be pried open. Nor were the gasbags, who normally had a robust appetite for lurid detail, any more forthcoming.
My theory is that the house contains the signature of evil, its mark, no more legible than a grease spot on the kitchen table. Unreadable yes, but a deadly contaminant if even tangentially parsed. Touched in whatever way—with recollection or speculation—this sick sigil will be activated, sending out waves of depravity that will drift invisibly into our lives and… gut us.
Containment. That described the communal project, didn’t it? Like building a new arena. Only this one was more of a holding facility for a certain breed of knowledge having to do with the very worst that human beings can do to one another. Have to own that I was itching to ferret out what that might be. I gave the place a surreptitious scrutiny in passing, half tempted to go over and take a good look through the bevelled—bedevilled?—living room window. But then, holy moly, I did sense a chill, a sensation of some ghoulish force reaching out to me, trying to draw me in, and I stepped up the pace, hastily recollecting my mission in town.
Little did I know that something equally uncanny was heading my way.
I did hear it coming, saw clouds of dust roiling in the distance, causing me to skitter aside. Shortly after, very shortly, a black car peeled past, skidded to a stop, pulled a U-ey, then rumbled up beside me. My cousin Nile, our local Lothario. He rolled down his window, looked me over.
“Nice dress,” he said.
“For a stiff.”
“Shoes?”
I shrugged. As our communicative style didn’t allow for a surfeit of information, I didn’t bother referencing my level of sophistication vis-à-vis crap vinyl pumps.
“Hop in.”
Hang on, did I hear that right?
Q: How long had I been waiting for this very invitation?
A: All my life.
No, not quite all. There were stretches during pre-puberty when I couldn’t stand the guy, my too-cool cousin. And then, and then… one day I noticed something about him. I’m not sure what it was, but he had it, he’d banked it, and he wasn’t giving it away. I developed a crush that felt exactly like that, as if I’d been dropped into a compactor, and my brain, which would have been very useful in this situation, extruded like paste out of my ears. Packaged for romance, I was ready to roll, while yet the squarest of girls. It wasn’t only me, either. He had lineups longer than the one for The Shaggy Dog that played for a weekend at the Legion years ago in my more heedless days. Indeed, Nile couldn’t pass by a bed of flowers without the whole clump blowing their pollen, hurling it wantonly
in his path.
That was then. Now, with my grey matter restored and regenerated, I planned to put it to much better use. University in the fall, career, success, wealth, acclaim, that sort of thing. Not for me, throwing it all away for some handsome hick. Let Bea reap the rewards of small-town, small-minded life, trapped forever in a claustrophobic house with a corral of tiny tots and Small Balls himself hollering for the little woman while he swills his small beer and blows the ass-end out of his smalls—
“Something funny?”
“Nope.”
“Get in.”
“No thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will.”
Couldn’t help but crane my neck to peer around him into the dark interior of the Buick, though. Over the years it had acquired many imagined features and as a consequence possessed an almost mythological allure. My mother had always warned me about getting into the car with Nile. Strictly verboten. I often wondered if she’d spent time in it herself during her more experimental days, feeling free to do the relevant research seeing as her own reputation was already shot. Front seat, back seat, a much younger man, hot stuff.
I took in the purple plush seat covers, the plastic hula-girl figurine on the dashboard, and the staggering number of souvenir blue garters looped over the rearview mirror. (Nile exercising an updated droit de seigneur?) I observed what I could, closely but dispassionately, like a forensics specialist at a crime scene. And then… I promptly walked around to the passenger side, pulled open the door, and got in. Somehow Nile seemed to know I would, for he’d kept the car idling, hands draped over the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, waiting. Now he gunned it, the car backfired, and we were off, leaving nothing behind but a hail of gravel spinning through the air.
I settled in easily—and gratefully enough after the long walk—wiggling cutely as I rooted myself in the cushy plush seat and began to appreciate the overall ambiance. I found it like being in a chapel, softly lit and soothing, hushed despite the purring engine, otherworldly… although noticeably deodorized. For a moment I couldn’t place the smell, definitely not of your usual fake-pine air freshener. This had more of a drugstore familiarity. Bea and I had often liberally sampled the smelly stuff at Crawford’s, dabbing every nook and cranny of exposed flesh until we reeled through the door reeking. And laughing, and snorting, merrily. (Not that I cared to think about that.)
Brut! Unmistakably Brut. The source of this killer cologne could only be Nile.
I turned to him, surprised—he being more of a natural-odour man—and finally, fully, took in the spectacle of him tricked out in dress shoes, black pants, and a clean white shirt, black tie stuffed in the pocket. A suit coat had been tossed onto the back seat. He appeared to be going to a whole lot more trouble than a wedding not his own warranted. And even then—
“What’s the deal?”
“Best man.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Pinch-hitter.”
“What happened to Stretch?”
“Fishing.”
“What about Squirt?”
“Dehorning the cattle.”
“Milton?”
“Broken leg.”
Okay, we all have our priorities, but I was beginning to suspect that this defection from the wedding party had more to do with the speechifying required of the best man at the reception. I could see how having to knock more than a few words together that didn’t involve baseball or imbibing stats might be a terrifying prospect for these guys. Either that or the powder blue tuxes that Bea had shipped in at great expense had sent them scrambling.
“Bea’ll be steamed.”
“She’s already steamed.” Significant sideways glance from the cousin here.
“How’d she talk you into it?”
“Her big day. Why ruin it.”
“So where’s your sucky blue suit?”
Now I get a full filleting look from Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes and further conversation is nipped in the bud.
We drove on in thoughtful silence—me anyway—and soon arrived at the church. Lots of people were milling around in their finery, chatting, laughing, shooting the breeze, primed for a good time. Some were climbing the stairs, eager to get a good seat, the bride’s side or the groom’s, either would do, no one takes this division too seriously. Besides, who isn’t related to both of them somewhere along the line?
Nile and I gazed in passing at the hearse parked in the prime spot in front of the church gate. This particular vehicle might seem prematurely placed at a wedding if one didn’t understand our practical arrangements here. The hearse was as close as we came to having a limo service, and, the Grim Reaper being only an occasional visitor, our funeral director, Glanville Goodwin, felt it would be a waste not to give his vehicle a more upbeat function and himself some extra income. Any morbid or unlucky associations the meat-wagon may have brought with it were charmingly lightened by the colourful crepe paper pompoms with which it had been gayly decorated.
Nile cruised along. Parking was tight, so he drove around the block. We gazed at the hearse again. He drove around the block again. A space opened up—no doubt a guest rushing home to retrieve the forgotten wedding present, the toaster or the waffle iron (those perennial domestic anchors)—and he sailed right past. Third time around the block, he stopped, idling in mid-street, parallel to the church gate.
“Want out?”
“Not really.”
He drove on and I got to thinking about what he’d said. Did I want to ruin Bea’s ‘big day’ that badly? Me alone? The big day that precedes a lifetime of small days to follow? The loose threads in my chest tightened painfully, as if they’d been given a good hard tug, keeping their burden in place. I began to picture Bea’s big day as the mouth of a cave, yawning hugely. She enters and begins walking. At first it’s fun—there’s cave art! stalagmites! diamonds glittering in the walls!—she’s enjoying herself. But before long the passage gets narrower and narrower, and she has to start crawling on her hands and knees, getting slimed with bat shit and shredding her wedding dress. The dark deepens, and deepens, there’s no way out, she gets stuck. Desperate, she calls out to her very best friend, who happens to be a high-powered divorce lawyer living in swish digs in Toronto (or someplace classier). Hero, Hero, I’m stuck!
“Too bad,” I say.
“Yeah, rough rocks.”
Whoops. I hadn’t meant to speak out loud. I gather that Nile’s referring to the wedding, which we appear to be leaving far behind. Main Street, past the hotel, up the hill, down the road that leads out of town, across the bridge. . . .
“Yeah, suck eggs sister… um, where are we going?”
“Splitsville.”
“More specifically?”
Nile shrugs. “Down south? We’ll check out your new school.”
“I’m not going now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s hundreds of miles away!”
“So?”
“My parents will kill me.”
“Nah.” Then he adds, mysteriously and somewhat alarmingly, “You and me, baby.”
Oh, Christ, he’s abducting me. Or perhaps we’re eloping. I could get married too, of course. A revenge not only served cold, but served like fast food. Quick, cheap, and very bad for one’s health.
What would my parents say? If they noticed. They had become preoccupied of late—with one another of all things, newly enamoured. I’d sensed that there’d been sexual activity on the premises. If there was a romantic je ne sais quoi about the most recent squat box that we’d washed up in, I for one had missed it. Not so very long ago my mother had clasped my hands in hers and regarded me with maternal concern, although I suspect her main concern had more to do with getting me out of the house.
“Hero, I’m worried about you,” she said. “All you do is study. You’ll
wear out your eyes if you keep this up. Are you having any fun, at all? A boyfriend? Surely there’s someone.”
So, basically, she was worried that I wasn’t getting knocked-up in the usual fecund rural tradition, while I, regarding her with equal concern, worried that she had been knocked-up. Wasn’t it a bit late for this? Some sibling filler for the upcoming empty nest? I knew that I’d been a disappointment, that for me she envisioned no life of illicit extramarital affairs, no hot nights fumbling with zippers under scratchy bushes lit with fireflies. Sad, in her view, that all I had to look forward to was financial security, success in my chosen field (and not the field out back of the War Memorial), honours, prestige. While other girls were out catching their man, I’d be pursuing my calling, which lay in catching criminals. I glanced over at Nile. Two birds with one stone?
Nothing for it, I propped my dusty feet against the glove compartment, wrapped my arms around my knees, and settled into our escapade. I told Nile all about my plans for school, the courses I’d be taking, and how, as a lawyer, I’d be bringing scum to justice. Or I’d bring justice to scum, depending on the circumstances. I explained how arson investigations work, fingerprinting, and blood splatter analysis.
“Handy,” he said, nodding.
I talked about my parents and his and our various relatives, books read over the summer, the stranger I’d be sharing a room with at the residence and how I hoped we’d be friends and not drive each other nuts, and offered him a miscellany of views on this and that, until finally he laughed and said, “Hero, shut up. You talk too much.”
Funny, but Bea had said the same thing, point-blank and without the laugh.